Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  “Years,” Casey repeated. “You did say years.”

  “That’s right. But those cases are extremely rare. Most patients never recover. I’m very sorry.”

  She wasn’t sure she could continue breathing. Her chest ached with the effort, while every other part of her body had gone numb. She could feel her heart hammering, could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

  “Why?” Danny asked, his voice unrecognizable. “How did this happen?”

  “Bacterial meningitis,” Mark said, “moves very quickly. It can kill in a matter of hours. Small children often run high fevers even when they’re not terribly sick, so parents don’t realize how sick the child is until other symptoms appear. If we catch the infection early enough, we can turn it around. If it’s advanced too far when the child reaches us, the mortality rate is high. Those who survive often end up with some degree of brain damage.”

  “So what you’re saying is that it’s my fault.”

  “I’m not saying anything of the kind. You’re not a doctor, Danny. You’re not a psychic. You’re a father who did everything in his power to see that his little girl got the medical help she needed.”

  “And failed,” Danny said.

  “Don’t,” Casey whispered. “Please don’t. Not now. I can’t take it.”

  “Why the hell didn’t I just put a gun to her head and pull the trigger? It would have been just as effective.”

  “Danny,” she shouted, “stop it!”

  They looked at each other, both of them breathing hard. “I can’t,” he said. And his voice broke. “I can’t.” He got up and slammed out of the room.

  She tried to follow him, but her legs wouldn’t hold her up. Mark pushed her back into the chair. “Ivan,” he said to the neurologist, “a cup of water for Mrs. Fiore.” Taking Casey by the hand, he said, “Let him go. It’s what he needs right now.”

  “I can’t do this, Mark. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You’re a remarkably strong lady. Don’t forget, I was there when Katie was born. I remember what you went through.”

  Ivan returned with the water, and she drank it. “I’m not strong,” she said. “It’s only that everybody’s always expected me to be, and when Mama died there wasn’t anybody else, and Danny’s always needed so much, and—” She looked up at him, realized she was babbling. “What am I going to do?” she said.

  Mark patted her hand. “We’ll figure that out together.”

  ***

  She refused to leave her daughter’s side. Mark had a cot brought in, and that was where she pretended to sleep during those bleak hours when she was alone except for Katie’s labored breathing and the eerie sounds of the electronic equipment that was helping her daughter stay alive. She ate hospital food from a tray that Mark had sent up especially for her, and went home only when she needed a shower or a change of clothing. After a few days, when Danny could no longer bear it, he went home and left her there.

  He called several times a day to beg her to come home, but she always refused. As long as she stayed by Katie’s side, nothing could happen to her. She was Katie’s guardian angel, her fairy godmother, her good luck charm. Mark, of course, disapproved. “You’re not doing your daughter any good,” he said, “and you’re killing yourself. Go home to your husband. He needs you.”

  But she refused to budge. When Katie started convulsing and the electronics went haywire, the entire pediatrics team came rushing into the room. One of the nurses shoved Casey out and shut the door firmly in her face. She leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, and slid limply to the floor with her head cradled in her arms.

  Rob called from New York, and for the first time, she cried, loudly and inelegantly, snuffling and snorting, while at the other end of the telephone line, he spoke soothing, nonsensical syllables. “That’s it,” he said, when she’d finally stopped. “I’m coming home.”

  “No,” she said, wiping her nose. “I’ll be fine. I just needed to let off some steam.”

  “Sweetheart, you’re wound tighter than a top. Where’s Danny?”

  “At home.”

  “Why the hell isn’t he there with you?”

  “He can’t face it. Will you call him? I’m worried about him. He shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  “I can think of a few things I’d like to call him right now.”

  “Don’t. Please. You don’t understand. You don’t know all of it. Danny’s not as strong as I am. He needs your support right now.”

  “Yeah, and you’re the tough one, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a survivor. Danny’s not so good at that.”

  A week passed with no change. Katie continued to undergo convulsions several times each day. Casey, who had borrowed several medical volumes from the hospital library, talked to her constantly, read to her, sang to her. Medical science knew little about what went on inside the mind of a comatose person. Seemingly hopeless cases had been known to respond to the voices of their loved ones, and Casey grasped frantically at any possibility, however remote, that her daughter would come back to her.

  Danny called. “Come home,” he said. “Please come home. I need you.”

  “I can’t. I can’t leave Katie. You come here.”

  “Jesus Christ, Casey, I can’t sit around that hospital room for hours on end. Every time she makes a sound, it terrifies me.”

  They were at a stalemate, and they both knew it. She curled up on her cot, furious with him, furious with herself, furious most of all with a God who would allow this to happen to her daughter.

  Hours later, she awakened, disoriented, to find Danny on his knees beside the cot, his head resting on her abdomen, one hand gently kneading her breast. A shaft of pure desire shot through her, followed immediately by guilt that she could even think about sex under the circumstances. “Danny?” she said thickly. “What time is it?”

  “Three-thirty in the morning. Come home with me. Just for a few hours. I need you.”

  “I can’t.”

  He responded by closing his mouth over her breast, hard enough to leave her gasping. Even through the fabric of her shirt, his damp heat was electrifying. Torn between duty and desire, she ran a hand around to the back of his neck. Beneath his collar, his skin was hot and moist. “All right,” she said. “But just for a little while.”

  It seemed like years since they’d made love. They undressed each other on the way to the bedroom, and their lovemaking was hot and sweaty and erotic, a primal celebration of life, a desperate act of defiance against the specter of death. Afterward, she dozed in his arms, content and sated, his skin warm and sticky against hers.

  It was daylight when the telephone woke her. She grappled for it, her body still sore from their lovemaking, and brought it to her mouth. Peeled apart her gummy lips and wet them with her tongue. “Hello?” she said.

  “Casey? This is Mark Johnson. Is Danny there with you?”

  She was still fuzzy-headed from lack of sleep. She sat up, groggy, and drew the long hair back from her face with one arm. “He’s right here,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I’d rather talk to Danny,” he said. “Can you put him on?”

  She finally came wide awake. “Mark?” she said sharply. “What’s wrong?”

  At the other end of the phone, he hesitated. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he said. “We lost Katie this morning.”

  chapter twenty-one

  Three weeks after she and Danny buried their daughter, Casey flew to New York to join Rob. It was for the best. She and Danny both needed space to deal with their grief, and work was the only outlet that would distance her from Katie’s death. She threw herself into her work, pushing Rob mercilessly by day. By night, she dragged him around to the clubs of Manhattan, desperate for something, anything, to take the edge off her grief. Never much of a drinker, she grew glassy-eyed and nauseous with only two or three shots of liquor, but she belted them down with gusto, and Rob kept his mouth shut because he understood the demons that dr
ove her.

  For six weeks, Casey walked around in an alcoholic stupor. Each morning, her head roared and her legs quibbled about going to work, but she and Rob still managed to put out some of the best material they’d ever written. She knew that people were talking behind her back. Some admired her stoicism. Others called her cold and unfeeling. Nobody in New York saw her sorrow. Nobody saw her cry. Nobody knew that when they’d lost Katie, she and Danny had also lost each other.

  Only once during the entire time she was in New York did she speak to Danny, and then the conversation was stilted and pointless. At the end of two months, she and Rob finally wrapped up the project. She stayed around until the loose ends were tied up, until Rothman had approved the material and she’d bidden him and his cronies farewell. And then she packed the lone suitcase she’d brought with her to New York, got on a plane, and went home to find out if she was still married.

  At home, things weren’t any better. Night after night, she lay alone in their king-size bed while Danny sat at the piano for hours, abusing the keyboard with dark, tormented music, pounding out Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, until she wanted to scream. He’d long since given up on sleeping, for every time he tried, the nightmares woke him, and he refused her comfort, instead lying stiff and unreachable beside her. Nothing Casey could say would convince him that he wasn’t responsible for Katie’s death, and his grief, compounded by guilt, was agonizing to watch.

  Katie’s room stayed just as she’d left it. Neither of them ventured near. The pain was still too new, and Casey was far too brittle to subject herself to that kind of torture. So the door remained closed, and they pretended it had always been that way, pretended that nothing was wrong, pretended that their marriage wasn’t disintegrating right before their eyes.

  But as time went by, Casey recognized the truth, could see it as clearly as if it were encased in crystal, could hear it in the music he played, night after night after night. Like two comets speeding through space, they were on a collision course with impending disaster, and she was helpless to do anything but watch, and wait, and hope their marriage survived the impact.

  The play went into production, and Rothman called them back to New York to iron out a few wrinkles in the score. That took several weeks, and when Rob flew back to L.A., she stayed behind in New York alone, to walk the streets and ponder the disaster that had become her life. Her career had reached unprecedented heights, but her personal life was a shambles, and she was afraid that this time, she and Danny weren’t going to make it.

  She flew into LAX on a sticky summer afternoon. Smog hung low over the city, exposing the tarnished underbelly of the city of angels, glamour capital of the world. Traffic was snarled everywhere, and the trip from the airport took twice as long as it should have. When she drove through her front gate, her mouth thinned. Danny’s Ferrari was missing from the garage, and she wondered just where he was, and with whom.

  When she unlocked the door, the phone was ringing. She nudged the door shut behind her and set down her suitcase. The answering machine kicked in, and a perky young voice said, “Mr. Fiore, this is Marilyn from Dr. Vogel’s office. The doctor’s been called out of town unexpectedly, and we need to reschedule tomorrow’s appointment.”

  Dr. Vogel? Who the hell was Dr. Vogel? Casey picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said.

  “Oh, hello. Is this Mrs. Fiore?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m really sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Fiore, but Dr. Vogel had a family emergency and he won’t be able to keep his appointment with your husband tomorrow. Can he come in at ten on Tuesday instead?”

  “I wasn’t aware that Danny had a doctor’s appointment.” She paused, trying to tamp down the fear that nowadays was never far from the surface. “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, sure, we always do a routine checkup six weeks after surgery. You know, to make sure everything’s healing properly. And to run a sperm count.”

  Sperm count?

  Her legs began to tremble, and she set down the purse she was still holding. “What surgery?” she said.

  For the first time, the voice at the other end hesitated. “Naturally, I assumed you knew.”

  Tersely, she said, “Feel free to enlighten me.”

  And the voice said, “Your husband had a vasectomy six weeks ago.”

  ***

  Most of what was in the house belonged to Danny.

  Casey spent a couple of hours packing her clothes and the few personal items that mattered to her. She loaded up her BMW, then went back inside and made herself a grilled cheese sandwich. It tasted like sawdust, but she forced it, by sheer will, to stay in her stomach. With mechanical motions, she loaded the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and then she opened the door to Katie’s room for the last time.

  Katie’s pink ruffled pajamas still hung over the bed post, and her beloved Pooh bear lay alone in the center of the bed. Casey picked up the scruffy yellow bear and cradled him to her breast. She took a last look around, then raised her chin and marched to the door, resolutely shutting it behind her. She stuffed the Pooh bear, all she had left of her daughter, into her overnight bag, and sat down on the couch to wait for her husband.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when he came home, moving cautiously, smelling of liquor. Even half drunk, he moved with graceful, sinuous elegance. At thirty-five, he was still the handsomest man she’d ever known. When he saw her sitting in the dark, he stopped and looked at her quizzically. “What’s all that stuff in the car?” he said.

  She squared her jaw, her shoulders. “I’m leaving you,” she said.

  He blinked, wobbled a little on unsteady feet. And snorted. “What in hell are you talking about?”

  A swirl of emotions roiled around inside her. Love. Hatred. Grief. Fury. Bewilderment. “After everything I’ve been through,” she said, “I can’t believe you could do this to me.”

  To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He snapped on a lamp, and in the sudden brightness, his face blurred. “I’d hoped,” he said, “that you wouldn’t find out.”

  “The doctor’s office called,” she said curtly, “to reschedule your appointment. I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might find it a bit odd, the inability to ever conceive again?”

  He sighed deeply and sat on the arm of the couch. “Before you go off half-cocked,” he said, “just listen to me.”

  Betrayal was a hard, sharp pain in her chest. “I don’t want to listen to you, Danny. I’m through listening to you.”

  “I’ve gone through hell these last few months,” he said. “I’ve watched you go through hell. It’s all but destroyed our marriage.”

  “No,” she said bitterly. “It’s you who’s destroyed our marriage.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Casey, think about it.” He scooped the long hair back from his face with the fingers of both hands. “Do you want to go through something like this again? I can’t even bear to think about the possibility. It would kill both of us. Think about what it would be like, having another baby. The hell we’d go through every time he bumped his head or fell off his bike. Can’t you see that I did it to save us both from more pain? I did it because I love you.”

  In disbelief, she said, “You took away any hope I might have of ever conceiving another child. You didn’t bother to consult me, just made the decision for both of us. And you expect me to believe you did it because you love me?” She buried her face in her hands, rubbed her tired eyes. “Lord, Danny,” she said, “I believe you’ve gone off the deep end.”

  “You know damn well I love you.”

  How could he look so earnest when her heart was a leaden weight, lodged hard against her breastbone? “I don’t care any more,” she said.

  “Bullshit! Look me in the face. Look me in the face and tell me you don’t love me any more.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, Danny,” she said sadly. “This has nothing to do with love.”

  “It has everyth
ing to do with love!”

  “No,” she said. “It has to do with trust. And the simple truth is that I can’t trust you any longer.”

  “So that’s it?” he said in utter disbelief. “You’re throwing away twelve years just like that?”

  “Right now,” she said, “I’m so angry, I can’t even look at you. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  “Christ, Casey,” he said, “I love you!”

  She looked at him through tears. “I know,” she said. “I love you, too. But it’s not enough any more.”

  She drove aimlessly for a couple of hours, uncertain of what to do, where to go. She’d been so propelled by fury that she hadn’t thought beyond getting in the car and driving as far away from Danny Fiore as she could possibly get. She passed one seedy motel after another, but eventually, inevitably, she found herself pulling into Rob’s driveway.

  It took him a while to answer the door. Dressed in nothing but a pair of gray sweat pants, he combed a hand through his tangled hair while his startled gaze took in her overnight bag, her slumped shoulders, her puffy eyes. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself.” Not quite successful at hiding the tremor in her voice, she said, “I realize it’s the middle of the night, but do you think an old friend could borrow your couch?” She hesitated. “And maybe your shoulder?”

  He opened the door wider, and she stepped past him and into the living room. In the middle of the floor, a pair of black high heel pumps had been carelessly discarded, and her face went red-hot. “You have company,” she said.

  “I, uh....yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. I never thought. I should have called first. Just go on back to your lady friend and forget I was here. I’ll go to a hotel.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, Fiore. If you need a place to stay, you’ll stay here.”

  “What about your date?”

  “Not a problem.” He switched on the lamp and she stood rocking from one foot to the other as he bent and picked up the black pumps. “Make us some tea,” he said. “I’ll find something a little stronger to go with it.” His mouth thinned. “You look like you could use it.”